CHAPTER XXVIII. HERC'S SUBTERFUGE.

On down the dark passage dashed Herc. As he sped he extended both hands in front of him. For all he knew he might be dashing into an ambush. It was all too plain now that the place into which he had so cheerfully blundered was of a sinister character.

Suddenly his finger tips encountered something solid that the next instant gave way before them.

A door swung open. Herc found himself in a large room, cluttered with rusty tools, benches, and boxes. High on one wall was a window, through the unwashed panes of which a gray light sifted wanly into the vacant room beneath.

The room was plainly enough a cul-de-sac. There was no means of entering or leaving it,[Pg 223] except by the door through which Herc had come,—that is, if the lofty window be excepted.

Pantingly the Dreadnought Boy looked about him. He must have a hiding place and that quickly. If he was to be of any use to Ned, it would be the worst thing that could happen if he, too, were to be made prisoner.

Poor Herc, if he had only known the true state of affairs! But with his customary impulsiveness the red-headed boy had followed his nose, and as not infrequently happened in Herc's affairs, it had led him into trouble.

"This place must be a perfect nest of Japanese spies," he mused to himself, as he gazed swiftly about. "Poor old Ned, they've trapped him and got him hidden away some place. But they won't get me so easily!"

He listened an instant. Footsteps were coming down the passage now.

"They've guessed I came this way. In fact,[Pg 224] they couldn't very well help doing it," thought Herc.

He glanced up at the window above him. Would it be possible to escape that way?

With frenzied haste he began pulling a dusty bench from one corner and flinging upon it the old boxes with which the room was littered. But his time was all too short. Herc had to give over his labors half completed at the nearer approach of footsteps.

"I've got to hide some place, and that right quickly," he muttered, glancing about him in every direction.

Herc darted for the dimmest corner and crouched behind a large open box that stood there.

He had just time to squeeze himself back of it and draw it over him like the shell of a tortoise when the door was burst open.

Half a dozen men, headed by Kenworth, Saki[Pg 225] and the spectacled Jap, burst into the room. They gazed wildly about them.

"Why—why, he's not here!" gasped out Kenworth. "The red-headed fox has escaped!"

"Eem-poss-ible," the spectacled Jap informed him. "There is no way of getting out this room."

"Then he must be here," declared Saki sententiously; "we must find him. He is one of the most dangerous enemies we have got. He is even worse than that Ned Strong, whose body now lies at the bottom of the Sound, for the meddling fool that he was."

"Yes, he is drowned and out of the way," rejoined Kenworth, "and it was we, after all, that had the good fortune to be picked up by a fishing boat after drifting about in our life belts for hours, and to be brought ashore here. And now, confound it, just when everything looks like smooth sailing, Mister Red Head has to bob up and spoil it all."

[Pg 226]

"Never mind that now," said Saki briskly, "he cannot have gone far. We must find him."

"He must be in this room," declared the spectacled Jap; "he could not get out except——"

He stopped short, gazing at the pile of boxes on the rickety bench. They stood right under the high window.

Kenworth was the first to read his thoughts.

"Could he have escaped that way?" he asked.

"I will ask you another question, honorable Kenworth," was the reply. "Could he climb?"

"Climb!" repeated the renegade midshipman with scorn. "Why, man, both those Dreadnought Boys would go in places that it would puzzle a cat to find a footing."

"Then there is your answer. He has escaped by the window."

"Confusion!"

"Yes; but he cannot get far."

"Why not?"

"That window opens on to a roof."

[Pg 227]

"Yes."

"The roof was once an extension, but now it is blocked in on all sides by the high walls of abandoned sail lofts."

"Then if he did get up there, he is a prisoner?"

"Without doubt."

"Good." The midshipman's face was flushed with malicious triumph. "He can't escape us this time. Saki, somebody, help me up, quick. This time he'll not get away. One Dreadnought Boy is at the bottom of the Sound. In a few minutes the other will be our prisoner."